Day Eight: Rounding Out

Wordcount: 13900
Minimum: 13792

Okay. Writing today's words took me a long darn time. On the bright side, though, I think the writing is getting smoother. I found that, quite without meaning to, I had written my two captains into a situation where they were soaked and freezing and needed to take off their wet clothes and go to bed in their tent. Usually this type of situation can only go in one direction, but I resisted, and they ended up talking to each other instead. This was good! I've been having some trouble developing the captains as characters, and I've especially been having trouble with the relationship between them. Locking them in a tent together with nowhere to go turned out to be a good way to deal with this problem. The only problem here was that I had to think up names of cities for them to say they came from...always a time-consuming prospect.

One challenge of the story I have chosen is that there are two main characters: Captain Farrowell and Captain Pitt. (Farrowell is inspired by Meriwether Lewis, and Pitt is inspired by William Clark.) It's difficult to provide a balance between the two characters, and to know when to switch from one point of view to the other. So far, I don't think they've really been working as a team; when you look through Farrowell's eyes, it's like Pitt isn't even there, and vice versa. On top of that, I haven't thought about Pitt's background much yet, so I tend not to write from his POV as much. The result is that there is some risk of Farrowell being the hero, with Pitt as a sidekick. I need to come up with some special adventures for Pitt so that he can come into his own. The benefit of little conversation I wrote today is that it opens the door for more development of the characters' individual backgrounds. In the final draft, all of this should probably come earlier, but for now, it's something I just need to get out of the way in order to move forward with confidence.